Insurance and Your College Kids

Out in front of our Oxford, OH insurance office, it is a busy place. Today 16,000+ Miami University students return to begin a new school year. This annual pilgrimage brings up potential insurance issues pertaining to what parent's personal insurance policies cover or don't cover. Three areas that parents should be aware of:

(1) If your son or daughter is going away to school over 100 miles from home without a car, most companies will rate your Personal Auto Policy for them being married which is a nice discount. Let us know if this discount might apply to your family and your Personal Auto Policy.

(2) Most insurance companies will extend personal property (contents) coverage and personal liability for your son or daughter while they are in college and living in a dormitory. Some, but not all, will also extend coverage if they are living in off campus facilities such as an apartment or other student housing. Please check with us to see if your insurance company provides this extended protection. If not, we should be able to write a Tenant/Homeowner for your student to cover both their personal property and personal liability while they are an undergraduate. If they are in graduate school, they should definitely have their own Tenant/Homeowner Policy.

(3) If you or your children are using a rental truck to take their things back to college, U-Haul, Penske, Hertz and other will offer you coverage on the vehicle (collision damage waiver) and extended liability. While these may be covered by your Personal Auto Policy, not all companies extend the protection, so check with us before renting the vehicle. Whether or not they are covered will depend on the length and Gross Vehicle Weight of the vehicle and several other factors. We may be suggesting you buy the extra protection from the rental company before your trip.

Vehicle Title Transfer

Several times a month our Oxford and Cincinnati insurance office receive calls from customers telling us to delete a car from their policy because they had just sold the vehicle. We always make sure to ask if this transaction was done between two individuals or if they sold it to a dealership. When we learn that it was sold to another individual we always offer a word of caution about deleting the insurance on the vehicle right away.

A normal vehicle sale transaction consists of the current owner signing over the title to the purchaser of the vehicle. Once the title is signed over to the purchaser the purchaser goes to the Clerk of Courts in that county and has the title officially transferred into their name. As everyone who has had to go to the Clerk of Courts for one reason or another knows, sometime it is difficult to carve out time in your day to make it to the county office and wait in line. This is the type of "To Do" item that many would put off or not have time to do for several days. This putting off going to the Clerk of Courts to transfer a vehicle's title can cause a small problem for the person who had just sold and signed over the title. Technically until the title is officially switched over to the purchaser the liability for the vehicle can still fall back on the seller.

Our Oxford insurance office once had a claim on a vehicle that our client had signed over to another individual two years earlier. However, the purchaser never went and officially switched over the title and our insured was pulled into a claim on the vehicle two years later because his name was technically still on the title.

So next time you have a private sale of a vehicle be sure to follow up with the purchaser and make sure they have switched over the title prior to calling and deleting any insurance coverage on the car.

A Social Media Risk Management Tip

My social media risk management tip is simple, think twice before you type a message, post a picture or join a group. Why, you may ask? Think back to the days when kids in grade school would pass notes back and forth during class. Often those notes could have damaging words written on them. They could be words that haunt the person that wrote them, the person who received them or a third party all together. However, the beautiful thing about those written scraps of paper is that they eventually got thrown away and are sitting in a dump far from anyone who could read them. Today those passed notes are now in the form of tweets, texts or Facebook posts. Today, those passed notes could be stored in the Library of Congress. Recently the Library of Congress announced that it would archive all public Twitter posts dating back to 2006.

Yesterday I read a New York Times article titled “The Web Means the End of Forgetting”, written by Jeffrey Rosen. It was a great article and sited a few examples of how those old Facebook or MySpace photo posts or text posts can come back to haunt individuals. The most famous example being Stacy Snyder who lost her teaching job because of a picture she had on MySpace. She even fought the situation in court and after two years of legal battle she lost in a federal district court. Rosen also talks about people who were fired from their jobs because of things they wrote on Twitter. This blog article could go on and on with examples of how things put on social media sites have come back to hurt individuals.

This Oxford and Cincinnati insurance office is not saying never to post on social media or that it is bad. We are just doing our job as risk managers and encouraging you to have fun but to be cautious in what you write or post.

Driving Drowsy

A 2008 study, taken from the Annals of Internal Medicine, suggest that some antihistamines may impair driving ability, even more than alcohol. The driver doesn’t even have to feel drowsy.

Forty study participants, when given diphenhydramine and an amount of alcohol to boost their blood alcohol level to .10 (legally impaired in most states), tested worse in a driving simulator when under the influence of antihistamine than under the influence of alcohol. A newer non-sedating antihistamine, Allegra, did not affect driving any more than the placebo given in a blind test screen.

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America estimates there are 50 million allergy sufferers in the United States. Allergies account for more than 17 million outpatient physician visits each year. Since the 1940s, antihistamines have been among the most widely prescribed medications. It is estimated that currently there are 30 million patients in the United State taking regular antihistamine medications in this $8 billion drug market.

If you have taken antihistamines, ask your doctor if a non-sedative prescription will work for you.

When on The Go... How Your Homeowner Liability Insurance Follows You

Homeowner liability insurance provides financial protection against legal obligations of the insured arising out of activities and conditions at the premises where the insured maintains a covered residence.

This coverage also extends to a personal activities of the named insured and household members anywhere in the world. You are on vacation in Europe- you’re covered; your child is on a mission trip in Mexico- you’re covered.

The homeowner policy defines an insured location as:

1. The qualifying residence premises where the named insured resides and which is shown as the residence premises described in the declarations.


2. The part of the premises used by the named insured as a residence and shown in the declaration, such as a seasonal residence.


3. Any premises used in connection with a residence as defined by one and two above.


4. The part of any premises not owned by an insured where the insured is temporarily residing. Examples would include a hotel room or vacation condo.


5. Vacant land, other than farmland, owned by or rented to an insured. Vacant land is generally defined as land upon which no man-made structures exist. An exception to this is land owned or rented to an insured on which a one to four family dwelling is being built as a residence for the insured.


6. Burial plots or vaults of an insured.


7. The part of premise occasionally rented to an insured for other than business use. An example would be a rented hall for a wedding reception.
   

An insured is defined as the person named in the declarations; that person’s spouse, as long as a resident of the household; relatives residing with the insured at the residence; and persons under the age of 21 and in care of the named insured, spouse or resident relative. This would include foster children or children for which the insured has guardianship.

Earthquake Insurance In Ohio?!

The big question going around on June 23rd was, “Did you feel the earthquake”. Many thought people were joking, but when they checked their Facebook page and saw that many of their friends in the Ohio area had felt the earth move, they knew the question was legit. The reason Ohioans felt the earth move was just north of us, Canada had a 5.0 magnitude earthquake.

Though we are not California or anywhere near California, Ohio still has their fair share of earthquakes. On average Ohio has 5 to 6 earthquakes a year. Year to date in 2010 we have already had 6, so the question that has to be asked of this insurance blog is should people in Ohio carry earthquake insurance? We at Fey Insurance Services feel that it is a good idea to have this coverage. It is something we always quote to our customers. For an average valued house the premium can range from $50 to $80 a year. Though we only have little earthquakes the potential for a large scale quake is there and if that happened the affects would be devastating to a home.

Feel free to get in touch with us to inquire about earthquake insurance.

New Travelers Insurance Commercial

Travelers always comes out with funny, clean commericals. This is a great example of one. Great little tune as well.